Aunt Ivy thought better of waking Mr. Mildew again; instead she hastily scribbled him a note on the back of an unpaid gas bill and left it on the kitchen table. Then the mice crept after her into the living room and watched from behind the door as she hurled her clothes into her suitcases and dragged them into the hall. When she heard the taxi spluttering to a halt outside, she tossed her black overcoat on over her robe, and went out of the door wearing slippers.
The mice all scrabbled up the curtains onto the windowsill and pressed their noses to the glass, watching avidly. The taxi had its headlights on full-beam, and a tall, thickset driver in a tweed cap got out. Aunt Ivy walked up the path toward him and pointed back toward the cottage, gesturing at him to collect the luggage. They heard him come inside, then saw him return to his car carrying three suitcases. Then he came back for the other two, flung them all into the trunk, and opened the passenger door for Aunt Ivy to get in.
The driver got inside and started the engine. Then there was a belch of exhaust fumes and Aunt Ivy was gone. The mice watched as the headlights faded into the night, and they knew the battle was won. “She’s gone!” they cried, waving their orange armbands in the air and jumping up and down with glee. The Colonel was so elated that he made to kiss the General, but then he stopped himself, and they both looked a little embarrassed.
The army trooped back to Nutmouse Hall, singing triumphantly, but the General lingered behind a moment in the living room, surveying the battlefield. Besides some dust that had fallen from the chimney, there was nothing to show that the Charge of the Bright Brigade had ever taken place. No fallen bodies, no bloodied barricades; the General wished all his battles could have been like this one.
He would not let it be forgotten in a hurry. I must telephone the Mouse Times first thing in the morning and make sure it carries a full report, he thought loftily, beginning to compose what he would say. He decided he would leave out the detail about his falling asleep on the mantelpiece.
Back in Nutmouse Hall, Nutmeg and Mrs. Marchmouse had spent an anxious night sitting by Tumtum’s bedside, wondering what was happening in Rose Cottage. They had heard the General’s pistol going off, and they had heard Aunt Ivy’s terrible shrieking, and they had prayed all the while that the army was winning. It had certainly sounded that way.
It was long after midnight when they heard the first of the troops returning through the front gates. Then the living room door burst open, and the General strode in. “The night is ours, ladies!” he cried delightedly. “Aunt Ivy has been soundly defeated; she’s retreated to Scotland in a taxi!”
Mrs. Marchmouse flung herself on him, weeping with joy. “Oh, darling, you are so clever and brave! And to think that I imagined I might never see you again!” The General smiled broadly, but then he looked down on Tumtum, lying palely on the chaise longue, and his expression turned to one of concern.
“How is the patient, Mrs. Nutmouse?” he asked gravely.
“His temperature is a little down, General, and he’s stopped being sick,” she said. “There is definitely some improvement. I do hope he wakes up soon—his spirits are bound to improve when he hears that Aunt Ivy has gone.”
Even as she said it, Tumtum’s head moved stiffly on the pillow. Very slowly and tentatively, he opened his eyes, then he blinked rapidly, like a creature who has lived all winter underground and burst up through the earth’s surface on the first day of spring.
“Did I hear you say Aunt Ivy had gone, dear?” he murmured, turning to his wife. He looked anxiously at the clock. “Oh, dearie me. Have I been asleep long? I feel quite ravenous. I hope I haven’t missed lunch.”
Nutmeg gazed adoringly at him, hardly daring to believe her eyes. He was still very pallid, but the sweat had lifted from his brow, and his eyes were clear and bright, quite unlike yesterday.
“Oh, Tumtum!” she cried joyfully, kissing him on his nose, which was healthy and moist again. “Yes, Aunt Ivy has gone! And you have missed more than lunch! You’ve missed a week of lunches, and a week of dinners, and a week of breakfasts and teas, and you’ve got so little tummy left that I’ll have to think of another name for you!”
Tumtum looked quite astonished. He patted his stomach and wondered where it had gone. He could remember going up to the attic the other night, and tucking into a plate of chocolate that had tasted rather strange, but since then everything was just a blur.
“What’s all that commotion?” he asked, hearing the mice clattering in through the front door.
“That’s the soldiers, Tumtum!” Nutmeg said. “You’ve slept through a battle!”
“Goodness!” Tumtum said, feeling more bewildered by the minute. Then his stomach started rumbling violently, and Nutmeg joyfully raced off to find him something to eat. The poor troops will be starving, too! she thought busily. What on earth can I feed them all?
But when she entered her kitchen, she found the problem had been solved for her. A pork sausage, a full six inches long, had been discovered abandoned in the Mildews’ grille, and the Colonel and the Brigadier had carried it back to Nutmouse Hall on their shoulders. There was also a whole slice of bread, which had needed four mice to carry it, and a knob of butter the size of a golf ball.
Nutmeg instructed the officers to lay out the feast in the banqueting hall. The room had last been used on her wedding day, and this morning her mood was so celebratory that she wanted to see its shutters thrown open again. “Left out of the ballroom, Colonel, then third door on your right—it’s the room with the big chandelier and the marble statues,” she explained, and then she scurried off to the kitchen to find some mustard.
Two barrels of cider were retrieved from Tumtum’s cellar, and then the feast got under way. The Colonel carved the sausage with his sword, and the Brigadier sliced the bread with a cutlass, and there were enough hot dogs for each mouse to eat until his stomach was fit to burst.
Nutmeg took a slice of sausage to Tumtum in the living room, and he wolfed it all down with a cup of strong tea. The General sat with them, giving them a blow-by-blow account of the battle.
“Quite ingenious, General, quite ingenious,” Tumtum kept muttering with his mouth full. And Nutmeg and Mrs. Marchmouse laughed until they wept when the General recounted how the mice had swung from Aunt Ivy’s earrings, and turned somersaults on her pearl necklace. “Oh, poor woman!” Nutmeg cried, dabbing tears from her eyes. “Poor, poor woman!” But when Nutmeg remembered the horror through which Aunt Ivy’d put Tumtum, it was hard to feel very sorry for her.
Finally, when the General felt he had been congratulated enough, he made to take his leave. “We’d best be getting home, Poppet,” he said, turning to his wife. “It will be dawn before we know it.”
“Goodness, yes,” she replied, remembering that she hadn’t slept for—how long was it? One day, two days? She was too tired to remember, and she suddenly longed for her warm bed in the gun cupboard. We’ll need a hot water bottle, she thought, thinking that all the fires would have long since died out.
“I’ll go and dismiss the mice,” the General said, getting to his feet. And yet he found himself oddly reluctant to go. Much as he loved Mrs. Marchmouse, the adventurer in him dreaded returning to his quiet life at home.
“Is there anything else I can do for you, Nutty?” he asked Tumtum hopefully.
“Oh, no, General, I think you’ve done quite enough,” Tumtum replied.
But Nutmeg was blushing. “There is something, General,” she said hesitantly. “But I’m afraid it might be asking rather a lot of you—I’m sure you’re yearning to get home.”
“Not if duty calls, Mrs. Nutmouse,” he replied stiffly.
“Well,” she went on. “It’s just that Tumtum and I have been trying so hard to keep Rose Cottage in order—to mend the radiators, seal the cracks in the windowpanes, patch the leaks in the ceiling, and dust and scrub and all that so that the children can live decently. But it’s all proven too much for us. I’m sure you noticed what a pitiful state the place is in. But with a whole army of you here, and all so healthy and strong, I thought, perhaps…Well, perhaps you could have a go at getting the place shipshape.”
The General beamed, delighted to be given another chance to take command. “Leave it to me, Mrs. Nutmouse,” he said. “Give us an hour or so, and we’ll have Rose Cottage looking fit for a mouse! My army numbers a plumber, and an electrician, and a carpenter, and a window glazer, and an engineer, and a thatcher, and a plasterer—”
“But would they be able to tackle human-sized things?” Nutmeg asked doubtfully.
“Of course they would,” the General replied. “I called the engineer around to the Manor House just last week to fix the overhead light in the gun room. He broke into the fuse box and sorted it out in no time; he said it was only a tripped switch. And when a pipe started leaking onto our gun cupboard, the plumber climbed up and patched it for me with some of his wife’s old copper saucepans. If humans had any sense they’d always employ mice for the fiddly jobs like that.”
“Quite so!” Tumtum agreed. “We could put every human laborer out of business!”
“Hmmm! No wonder they’re so wary of us then,” the General said, making for the door. Then he marched off to the ballroom to start bossing everyone around.
From Nutmouse Hall, the Nutmouses and Mrs. March-mouse could hear the distant hum of activity as the army advanced through Rose Cottage, putting things to rights. At one point, there was a loud hiccup, followed by a deep whirring noise. “Sounds like they’ve got the old boiler working again!” Tumtum said admiringly. Then there was a great crashing and rattling in the kitchen as dozens of mice scrambled about scouring the stove.
They went through each room, mending and scrubbing; and when they found the tin mouse in Mr. Mildew’s study, they took it apart and gave it a whole new digestive system so that it could keep down all the crumbs it gobbled. They tested it on Mr. Mildew’s desk, which was always covered with crumbs, and it worked very efficiently. I must get one for the gun cupboard, the General thought. Much better than a vacuum cleaner.
Last of all, they carried out a lightning attack on the attic. The plumber unblocked the sink, the engineer repaired the engine on Arthur’s train set, and the carpenter sawed little pieces off one of the shelves in the wardrobe and used them to board one of the broken windowpanes where Tumtum’s repairs had come undone. The Colonel had discovered half a sack of coal in the wood shed, and the army carried enough lumps upstairs to light the attic fire.
Just as the flames were beginning to flicker, two great human fists emerged from Arthur’s bed and stretched slowly into the air. With a start, the General realized that dawn had crept up on them; the sun was pouring through the window.
“Downstairs, quick!” he ordered, and all at once the army started hurtling toward the attic steps. The General brought up the rear, and had Arthur sat up and opened his eyes a moment sooner, he would have seen an elderly mouse charging across his bedroom floor brandishing a pistol.